Friday, October 9, 2009

Queens Man Charged With Selling Guns

Newsday.com reports on the indictment of a Queens New York man who ran a multi-state gun smuggling ring.

Juan "Junior" Leon, 30, of Astoria, sold as many as 30 firearms, on some occasions while the weapons were loaded with live rounds, to undercover New York City police officers posing as buyers, authorities said.

Leon met with the officers 20 separate times over the course of a year, police and prosecutors said. He was indicted by a Queens grand jury on 107 counts, including criminal sale of a firearm and criminal sale of a controlled substance.

Eleven of the weapons confiscated were originally procured by Corey Odle, 31, and Bryan Brown, 22, both of Newport News, Va., who stole them from households in Virginia and Pennsylvania, NYPD Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said yesterday.

The weapons were then trafficked via Interstate-95 - which authorities have nicknamed "The Iron Pipeline" - and sold in Queens by Leon at a profit, according to Queens District Attorney Richard Brown.

"A small caliber handgun, for example, can be purchased on the streets of Virginia for as little as $75," said Brown. "It comes to New York, it can go up for as much as $1,000."

Now wait a minute, did they just say the guns were stolen from homes? What does that mean for our theory about the differing gun laws in Virginia and New York? Guns can be stolen anywhere, right? But, the District Attorney also said that guns are cheap to buy on the street in VA and worth so much more in NY.

So, I suppose what it means is this. Guns are so common in the homes of Virginia and Pennsylvania residents that burglars can make a nice profit stealing them. Guns are also so prevalent and cheap on the streets of Virginia, that enterprising folks make a business of buying and selling after a nice drive up the New Jersey Turnpike.

What's your opinion? Is the "iron pipeline" a myth invented by the evil gun-banners? Or, given the tremendous disparity in gun laws and attitudes between states like Virginia and New York, is there a continual flow of weapons up that "pipeline?" Which do you think it is?

What about the sting operation that Junior Leon fell for? Is that as distasteful to pro-gun folks as the undercover operators who went to the gun shows at Bloomberg's behest? Are these victimless crimes, as has been said about the gun show sales?

25 comments:

So a Virginian's right to own lifesaving firepower should be restricted on the grounds that it might be stolen from him, and used elsewhere for evil? Good luck selling that idea to Virginians: "You can't have guns--there are too many people who break into homes for criminal purposes."

I always get a kick out of people who talk about "Virginia's lax gun laws"--it's one of four states that have the ridiculous "one-gun-a-month" laws.

PRINCETON, NJ -- Gallup finds a new low of 44% of Americans saying the laws covering firearm sales should be made more strict. That is down 5 points in the last year and 34 points from the high of 78% recorded the first time the question was asked, in 1990.________________________________

OUCH! That's gonna leave a mark.

But that's OK, mike will just say that he feels this poll isn't accurate, and be done with it.

I hear stories that NJ State Police used to stop boat loads of gun runners, but since the vast majority of the so called gun runners were minorities, the NJ State Police were sued based on *profiling*, thus, the Iron Pipe is up and running.

Sure, I imagine that sometimes, there is some truth to the claim that sensitivity to charges of racial profiling cause officers and prosecutors to act with an overabundance of circumspection, but I have trouble imagining that law enforcement--particularly New Jersey law enforcement--would let gun traffickers go for fear of bringing down the wrath of (who--NAACP? ACLU?--I'm not sure).

No beowulf, that's not my contention at all, as I believe I've explained to you before. The ocasional remark like that one of Phuckpolitics' that you mentioned, is OK with me. It's the exasperating persistence of personal attacks and name-calling, much of which is milder than what PP said, that I don't allow.

This is my rationale. You can take it or leave it. But, I can ensure you it has nothing to do with the argument. In fact, that's the whole point, usually the deleted comments contain no substance whatever. So, I'm not trying to cheat in order to gain an advantage in the discussion. You can believe that or not, as you like.

Bottom line, it's my blog. Why can't you accept my rules? Don't I give you enough to argue about without also arguing with me about how I run my own blog?

The ocasional remark like that one of Phuckpolitics' that you mentioned, is OK with me. It's the exasperating persistence of personal attacks and name-calling, much of which is milder than what PP said, that I don't allow.

I guess my confusion stemmed from your saying that you "only delete the ones that become repetitiously tedious or exceedingly nasty" (my emphasis)--implying, I thought, that one condition for deletion was excessive repetition, and a separate, independent condition was excessive nastiness. If I was wrong, my mistake.

And no--I don't dispute your right to run your own blog as you see fit. I would respect you more if you acknowledged that you hold your ideological allies to a lower standard of behavior than to which you hold your adversaries, but since I believe that we hold ourselves to a higher moral standard than your side does, I guess I won't lose any sleep over it.

Sheesh guys! He's telling you that your insults aren't creative enough! Either come up with something new or he'll delete you! (And I can't really disagree with that since you guys drag the same dead arguments from blog to blog to blog.)

TomB, That 44% figure from Gallup is interesting. I like it a bit better than the 39% that Rasmussen came up with, but I still don't buy it and I'll tell you why.

Pro-gun folks tend to be passionate about guns. Non-gun people tend to be apathetic. The results show in all these polls by distorting the results in favor of the gun guys.

The same phenomenon enters into the question that Albert asked. I was a non-gun, fairly apathetic (about guns) liberal, say two years ago. I was fascinated by gun crime but by no means was I passionate about gun control like I am now. That came gradually in the writing of this blog. Inspired by the fantastic commenters, and I don't mean that sarcastically at all, I began to read a bit and gradually I felt myself pulled into the debate deeper and deeper.Some months ago, I changed the heading on the blog, I don't know if anyone noticed, it used to be "politics, guns, capital punishment...," now it's "guns, politics, capital punishment..."

Now that I am passionate, no reason or justification seems necessary. I love our uniquely American problem of gun violence. I love everything about it. It fascinates me and frightens me. I love the comparison I frequently make when seeing a night time scene here in Rome, young people hanging out, and recognizing that no one has a gun and no one is wondering if the others do. I mentally compare that to a comparable scene in the U.S. It's fascinating.

I'm blown away by the over-the-top reactions I often elicit from the pro-gun folks. It's all endlessly fascinating.

TomB, That 44% figure from Gallup is interesting. I like it a bit better than the 39% that Rasmussen came up with . . .

About 5% better?

Pro-gun folks tend to be passionate about guns. Non-gun people tend to be apathetic. The results show in all these polls by distorting the results in favor of the gun guys.

I agree that we pro-rights individuals tend to care more about safeguarding rights than members of the rights denial lobby care about trampling them, but how would that affect the polls? I've never heard of such a poll asking how much the person wanted this or that infringement of that which shall not be infringed--just "do you support Proposed Gun Law X?" If they call 10 people, 7 of whom did support it, although with no great fervor, and 3 who passionately opposed it, the result would still be 70% for and 30% against.

I do think that elections are affected by the degree to which voters care about the issue. "Blue Dog" Democrats know they can support gun rights without worrying that the anti-gun pantywaists won't care enough about the issue to vote for the opposition based on that alone, but gun rights advocates could agree with a candidate on just about everything else, but vote for the other guy, if he is better for gun rights.

"A small caliber handgun, for example, can be purchased on the streets of Virginia for as little as $75," said Brown. "It comes to New York, it can go up for as much as $1,000."

Goes for "as much as" $1,000. I can believe that guns that can be bought legally in Virginia for $450-$500 (like Glocks) can go for as much as $1,000 in New York. I can even believe that a $75 Jennings would bring maybe twice or even three times that in New York. But you will not find a $75 gun routinely bringing $1,000 as they would have you believe from that quote.

That said, I do not argue that someone taking the risks to smuggle guns into New York would definitely want to make a profit. And I doubt someone that is stealing them in Virginia has a street corner gun shop in the Bronx so there are also middle men and distributors in the black market just like in legitimate businesses.

Also, I've been to New York. Everything costs far more there than almost the rest of the country so if you just apply that scale, I can easily see a gun being worth 2-5 times what it is in Free America.

Hey, I just took my J-22 out for a spin yesterday! Yeah it is a POS, but I didn't pay much for it, and assholes like Helmke and Sugarmann think I shouldn't have access to "Junk Gun" "Saturday Night Specials" like that.

FYI the name originated as "Saturday Night Ni**** town special" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturday_night_special#Origin_of_the_term

You certainly are quick to give people a pass on exaggerations--which are, after all, a type of lie. Once it's established that someone has lied, that makes him a liar. That, in turn, makes everything he says suspect, unless it can be confirmed through a more trustworthy source.